Thursday, February 23, 2012

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Winsome Witch (1965)

In the 60's, it was being proven time and again that witches, ghosts, & goblins could actually be presented as friendly beings. Casper, after all, was appearing on ABC with his Harvey Comics pals, including Wendy, the "Good Little Witch".

In prime time, ABC also had Bewitched, a sitcom about a witch who married a mortal. Surely, there was room for one more good witch?

NBC & Hanna-Barbera decided to take a chance in 1965. H-B, at the time a sister company to Screen Gems, the producers of Bewitched, introduced one Winsome Witch as one of the backup segments on Secret Squirrel. Winsome W. Witch (Jean VanderPyl, The Flintstones) rode around on a broom and dressed as witches traditionally did, save for Wendy (who wore a red hooded jumpsuit), and of course, Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery, Bewitched). While her adventures were meant to be for comedy, like her fellow witches, Winsome was also a sort-of heroine whose well-meaning good deeds were tempered with clumsy, nervous bumbling.

Muttley16 uploaded this long missing bumper:

It's a pity Winsome never met her co-stars, Secret Squirrel and Squiddly Diddly, but back in those days, each story was self-contained, and there wasn't a need for a cross-over. Today would be a different story......

That would be construed as an inside joke. There was a Ricochet Rabbit cartoon where an outlaw said that "If I want laughs, I'll watch Magilla Gorilla". Of course, this was when Ricochet was one of the backups for Magilla!